My Journey Towards a Radiant Smile
I won’t beat around the bush, I’m getting into the latter years of my life and I long for the fleeting moments that I once enjoyed in my youth. Late at night, when I begin to reflect on the adolescent years of my life, one theme keeps reoccurring: I was always smiling from ear to ear. Looking back on these pictures, my teeth were glowing and I get a sense of how I was feeling in that particular moment. Perhaps my high-school crush just agreed to go to a dance with me, I just received my first car or I was trekking off to experience my college years. Whatever the case may be, nothing was holding me back from expressing myself, but the thought of my oral health and seeing a dentist never crossed my mind.
The thing that changed since then, despite undergoing critical moments in my life like starting a family, purchasing a home and changing careers at random, is that my health began to dwindle. Fortunately, I hadn’t succumb to various problems like arthritis or serious health concerns like cancer or elevated blood pressure. No, my problem stemmed from the fact that I was afraid to showcase my smile in public for fear of being ridiculed. You see, I’ve always brushed my teeth but I’ve never taken the necessary steps to ensure that my teeth would remain white as the years began to pass.
First Step: Get Those Pearly Whites Back!
Finally I had enough and planned an appointment with my dental clinic. I sat down with my dentist and began crafting a strategy that would ensure my teeth not only looked visually pleasing to the eye, but the internal mechanisms of my teeth were healthy and operating efficiently. “We need to get those pearly whites back,” I heard my doctor tell me in one of our routine visits. Although it may sound comical, I’d never heard of teeth whitening up to this point and began to grow anxious. Are they going to throw a chemical concoction into my mouth and hope for the best, or worse, were they going to use expensive power tools to sand my teeth?
Luckily for me, my doctor explained that each tooth has an outer coating of something called Enamel. The Enamel is filled with porous openings that can get clogged with food, artificial color, cigarette smoke and coffee — my favorite! When a person fails to get their teeth professionally cleaned for an extended period of time, these pores begin to discolor the entire surface of the tooth which, in turn, leaves us feeling embarrassed and ashamed.
Oral health, in my personal opinion, holds the psychological key that leads to self assurance and the confidence needed to tackle each day as it comes. Although getting my teeth cleaned and whitened may have seemed trivial, that trip to the dental clinic changed my life. I no longer yearn for yesteryear, I’m living and breathing it each and every day.
